Mini-Post: I've Been Flocked

No, no not that type of Flocked with with plastic pink flamingos but rather with traffic cameras!

Flock Safety’s Feature Updates Cannot Make Automated License Plate Readers Safe

Electronic Freedom Foundation

By Sarah Hamid and Rindala Alajaji

June 27, 2025

Two recent statements from the surveillance company—one addressing Illinois privacy violations and another defending the company's national surveillance network—reveal a troubling pattern: when confronted by evidence of widespread abuse, Flock Safety has blamed users, downplayed harms, and doubled down on the very systems that enabled the violations in the first place.

Flock's aggressive public relations campaign to salvage its reputation comes as no surprise. Last month, we described how investigative reporting from 404 Media revealed that a sheriff's office in Texas searched data from more than 83,000 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras to track down a woman suspected of self-managing an abortion. (A scenario that may have been avoided, it's worth noting, had Flock taken action when they were first warned about this threat three years ago).

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As if that weren't enough, the company has also come under fire for how its ALPR network data is being actively used to assist in mass deportation. Despite U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) having no formal agreement with Flock Safety, public records revealed "more than 4,000 nation and statewide lookups by local and state police done either at the behest of the federal government or as an 'informal' favor to federal law enforcement, or with a potential immigration focus." The network audit data analyzed by 404 exposed an informal data-sharing environment that creates an end-run around oversight and accountability measures: federal agencies can access the surveillance network through local partnerships without the transparency and legal constraints that would apply to direct federal contracts.

This is one of my concerns... Big Brother!

We cannot put the genie back in the bottle so we must control it! We must control where they are placed (Like license reader in front of abortion clinics), how long the images can be kept (A month? Six months, etc.), will they need a warrant to obtain license registrations and who can access the data (Police? Insurance companies? The general public?) Will they be used for over-policing of communities of Color and low‑income neighborhoods? Will they be used for political reasons?

We cannot not stop them but we can control them... but it all depends upon the regime in power at the time.